


The Re/Formation of Billy Bones

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Backstory, Blow Jobs, Bones is a smol softe, Childhood, Crying, Dirty Talk, Flint is a bossy bottom, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Kissing, M/M, Pre-Canon, References to Canon, Tenderness, servitude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: Billy Bones began life as a boy too quick to cry.
Relationships: Billy Bones/Captain Flint | James McGraw
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	The Re/Formation of Billy Bones

Matthew Ross’s earliest memory was of nestling at his mother’s breast, though no one believed him when he said so. Her arm around his shoulder, strong hand beneath his bottom, curled him warm and safe against her belly, and her skin was smooth beneath his soft-brushing hand. Now and then she gazed down at him and smiled, swept her fingertips across his forehead, adjusted his bonnet. For all the years of his life, he endured a nagging, hollow longing for that singular experience of being cradled, nourished, and petted, drowsy in pure contentment.

Later, he wept when the babies died—first a brother, then a sister. His mother cried, too, but not as extravagantly. His father scolded him for it, but lightly; he was committed to a kinder world, beginning in his own home. But babies would die, and crying boys grew up soft; these were facts of life Matthew Ross must learn. His life would be hard, and so should he be.

The curate who taught him his letters was an angry, impatient old man who never hesitated to twist Matthew’s ear, or pinch his arm, or smack his knuckles with the handle of his walking stick. Matthew learned to write his name, and every time the letters smeared to blobs from falling tears. He read the Bible through a shimmering, magnifying veil of them. He stroked his pinched places, comforting himself, which made the curate raise his voice and Matthew dive beneath the table, where he curled up tiny until his father—furious with the humiliation of such a delicate son—yanked him forth and shook him until his teeth rattled. Matthew learned his reading and writing as quickly as he could, to bring an end to it.

The boys in his street learned their fathers' trades—masons and farriers, builders and blacksmiths—and their scarred, work-rough hands balled up to beat him. Matthew, raised to turn the other cheek, knew every best route through the village to run away from a fight, ducking into bins of firewood, cowering behind cart wheels. Fleeing home with a split lip or black eye, Matthew sought refuge beneath the skirts of his family’s housekeeper, a stout woman called Mrs Manderley. She was English and was paid a wage; his parents stood firm against any form of servitude. She was older than his mother, and smiled more, and instead of hushing him, held him when he cried—so easily and often, well beyond the age when such fussing was normally tolerated. She combed her fingers through his hair and showed him how to thread embroidery needles, knit yarn into caps and mufflers, knead bread dough so it would rise up fluffy and soft when it baked. Wiping his wet cheeks with the corner of her apron, she assured him he would always be safe behind her—the good lord knew Wilhelmina Manderley’s back was a strong one.

By the age of thirteen he’d grown taller than most adults of his acquaintance, which granted him a slight reprieve from the bullying of other boys, but too soon put the men onto him. Matthew learned to stay clear of the bawdy houses, as nearly every hour of the day they spit forth drunken men looking for a fight. Lying awake at night, Matthew thought about their hands on his face, holding his shirt front, steadying him by a clutch of his wrist—all for entirely other reasons. Although he knew he should feel ashamed at such thoughts, he never truly did.

In his dreams, seventeen-year-old Matthew imagined a man with a well-kept beard and fine clothes, with smooth, soft hair caught in a ribbon behind his neck, who would take him away from his father’s small house in their smelly, noisy street. Take him somewhere Matthew could breathe easy, where he need not dart his gaze every-which-way to keep watch for those who would abuse him, wouldn’t be forced to offer the unwounded cheek after the first one caught a blow. Somewhere he would speak and be heard. Somewhere he would be thought of as fully a man, despite his brittle disposition. Where that place may be—or if it be at all—he only wished he knew.

The men who eventually did take him away—pressganged him into the navy, right off the street where he distributed pamphlets denouncing pressgangs, written by his mother and printed by his father—were smelly brutes who threatened and manhandled and even chased him, then used thick sticks to beat the cowardice out of Matthew Ross. They collected wages, wore uniforms and authority with equal pomposity, demanding submission and fear and calling it respect. Marched away in shackles, Matthew—a kinder and nobler young man—gritted his teeth against the temptation of tears, invited hatred to harden him. As one of the few able to write down his name in the record of the newly conscripted, he made it a strong one, one behind which he would always be safe.

  


William Manderley worked twice as hard, half-again as long, spoke only when spoken to first. He mastered his knots in a fortnight, had his sea legs even quicker, was early for every watch and late for every meal. He stood at attention and saluted a full head and shoulders above the next biggest man. He never complained. He made no trouble of himself. For three years he was a model sailor, sober in port and sedulous aboard. He talked his way out of an assignment to the pressgang, made himself indispensable to the quartermaster. Wrote letters dictated by his crewmates to their fathers, wives, or sweethearts back in England. He never wrote a single one of his own. By the time his ship was boarded by a pirate crew and commandeered in a wash of blood and a cacophony of screams, he had all but forgotten his old name.

Under starlight and half a moon, in the hours after the last of the dying had finally stopped moaning and once and for all spent their final breaths, William Manderley slid a cutlass from beneath the body of one of his crewmates—formerly a merchant seaman impressed not a week before; William did not know nor care to know his name—and crept without his boots the length of the deck, his naked feet slipping in slicks of thickening blood, catching on the outstretched fingers of the fallen. On the starboard side, pirates heaved bodies up over the rail; every three or four minutes sounded their weary grunts, and some rustling as they looted the dead man’s pockets, then a distant low splash. William kept to the shadows. He peered down a ladder, descended.

Snoring and rats’ noises were all there was to hear besides the familiar creak of the ship as it sailed in the wrong direction. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the new layer of darkness. A soft-footed sprint, dancing between swinging bunks, and he knew how to angle the door latch just so, to keep it from squealing at the hinges. He did not hesitate to walk the last few strides, force the captain’s cabin door with his shoulder, and stomp forward. The captain who had given him orders since the day he was stolen let go a startled yelp and raised his hands. In the edge of William’s vision, he caught the motion of a sword drawn by the startled-upright pirate captain, but in the center of his vision all he saw was white, hot white, and he lunged forward, swinging wildly. Screaming out the rage of having been held three years a prisoner. He slashed and slashed until his captor’s arms were off, his head hung sideways, his chest was ribbons and then was muck. He went on swinging—roaring—until his blade clanged against the fiend’s bones, and broke them, and finally stuck. Spent and panting, growling, he could not muster the strength required to pull it free.

The pirate captain—compact and sturdy, with steel in his narrow gaze—stood by with his sword in hand, but held low. When William Manderley came partway back to his senses and caught a glance at him, the captain sized him up with a scanning look from bare, blood-soaked feet to spattered smock, to flaring nostrils, and William felt himself being assessed as surely as he felt the burn of his muscles from recent, full-throated exertion. He smeared his dead captain’s blood from his lips with the back of his hand. After a few silent seconds, the pirate captain slowly returned his sword to its sheath and folded his arms in front of his chest.

“What do they call you?”

“Manderley, sir. William Manderley.”

“You were pressed, I take it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“From a merchant ship?”

“No, sir. Off the streets in Plymouth. I’m a landsman.”

The pirate captain’s mouth quirked at the corner. “I’d say you’re not, anymore.” He gestured to the captain’s log book, lying open on the writing table. “Rather, your captain noted you were the most capable sailor aboard. He congratulated himself for never having allowed you to touch English soil, so as to keep you in his command.”

“In bondage, more like,” William snapped, then remembered himself and added, “Forgive me, sir, for speaking out of turn.”

The pirate captain tipped his chin in affirmation. “I imagine you’ll be in a hurry to get back home, then.”

All he had wanted for three years was to get there. To take up his father’s printing trade, to make his mother comfortable. To see Mrs Manderley again, whistling through her teeth while she baked the bread. He’d have to duck his head to go in the kitchen door. His legs likely wouldn’t fit under the table. He looked down at his hands, thick with calluses, knuckles roped with scars. There was blood drying in spiderweb sprays from his wrists to his shoulders. He looked at the ruined body of his captain, the cutlass standing straight out from his chest where it had sunk into this collarbone and caught. He remembered his father, preaching at him to always turn the other cheek—to turn away from violence. His mother would sob to know her gentle, intelligent son had grown into a gangly monster with blood in his eyes, one who could so cruelly butcher another man, no matter that he was a ghoul. Mrs Manderley, whose name he had stolen, and now had smeared with murder-offal, which stank and would never be washed away. Surely there could be no home there, for a man like him. He knew it as surely as he had known he must end this man who had stolen and chained him, and made him forget there was anything in the world but the roiling sea and the blinding sun and backbreaking work until the end of time.

“No, sir,” he answered. “I’ll not be going home.” He spread and curled his fingers, felt blood flaking off them. “If you’ve need of good crewmen, I can work to earn my keep until you put me ashore somewhere.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, honestly. “Find another ship.”

“Talk to me in the morning,” the pirate captain said. “I think I can find a place for you for longer than it takes to get to our next port. Hard work reaps benefits in my fleet. Talk to my crew; they’ll tell you.”

William nodded, blank and exhausted.

The pirate captain moved to the door, which had swung closed behind William’s furious entry into the cabin, and opened it. He motioned for William to step out. “Rest well,” he said, as William passed by him and ducked under the door’s crooked frame. “Ho, Lawrence,” he called to a man dozing nearby, who shook himself awake and found his feet immediately. “Find a comfortable bunk for our friend here, Billy Bones. He’ll be joining our crew. Make him welcome.”

“Yessir,” came the reply, and the pirate directed the gore-stained, freshly born Billy Bones toward yet another new life.

  


Billy Bones struck terror in the hearts of any man foolish enough to oppose him. Thick and tall as a tree, with inscrutable eyes and a cruel mouth, first-over-the-rail marauder Billy Bones smashed his way into every fight blade-first. His specialty was quickly defined: kill without mercy, blind to rank or infirmity, and keep on slashing and beating and stomping until whoever was left on his feet threw his weapons down and his hands up. Sometimes he could stop after one or two, if the ship’s crew was fickle in its fidelity to the captain, or very green and easily terrified, or very seasoned and growing weary. Other times he and his crewmates met their matches, and it was a blazing fight for life before simmering down into a fight for control, and then for loot. Billy Bones was respected, perhaps even feared by his shipmates. Taking up a blade or a blunderbuss was requisite for the success of their missions, and not a man aboard hesitated when the time was ripe, but Billy was always first with his hand on the hilt, and he fought with a fervour that looked like zealotry. Or ecstasy.

Captain Flint had not asked him to join the crew of the _Walrus_ , nor had Bill asked to join. Flint declared it and Billy did it, for he had nothing else in the world to do, or to be. He kept his share in the books, to be paid out at some future date, when he became tired, or was blinded, or lost his nerve. Then he would take his hard-fought wealth and build a home with no view to the sea, and stay warm and dry by a fire every night of his life. Flint was intelligent, fair-minded, and most vital of all, feared. Impressment into the navy had meant a life of hard labour with no spoils to show for it, being shackled in the hold for days at a time while the ship sat in an English port, no credit given, no promotion. Aboard the _Walrus_ , Billy’s penchant for tireless toil and his sensible advice—only given when he was asked—lifted him to first mate, and eventually to bosun. Word around the ship was that Billy Bones was gritty and game, friendly enough, not a cheater at cards, but don’t cross him, god knows what he’s capable of.

Once, shortly to set sail out of Nassau, Billy scooped up a cat to keep the rats down and a week later it came clear he’d chosen wrong. The cat burrowed under a bundle of rags one night and by morning instead of one pudgy cat, there were seven of them. It fell to Billy to bundle up the kits and toss them overboard—he’d done it before, of course; a ship overrun by cats would be as intolerable as one overrun by rats—and he plucked them up, two to a hand, and dropped them in a sack. He twirled it shut and climbed the ladder to the deck. It was too lightweight to trust throwing it; he had to lean well over the rail and drop it, to be sure it hit the water. The rest of the day was work as usual, slow-going in light wind.

But then he discovered he’d missed one. Bunk-bound and dead tired, he hadn’t the will to return above, just to drown one lousy kitten. Scooping it up in his palm, Billy rolled it about a bit, thought to twist its neck, but in the end tucked it into his shirt and let it sleep there, against his chest. He was mildly surprised to find the thing still alive in the morning, and he slipped it back beneath its mother, who licked it furiously and nudged it toward her belly to find its sustenance. Every night for nearly a month, Billy fitted the striped little ball of fluff into his shirt, careful not to let anyone else see, lest they think him unmanly. Eventually he’d fitted up a little sling tied up under his shirt, so he could keep the kitten with him at other times as well, its tiny peeping drowned out by the shouts of the men, the flap of sail cloth, the creak of the planks.

The kitten was curled up at the side of his belly just so one early evening, when Billy was summoned to the captain’s cabin on some pretense of planning or problem. It was usual. It made a good cover; the other men never suspected what went on behind the tight-shut door of Flint’s whitewashed cabin, with its better bunk and better lamps, well-carved desk and chair looted off a Spanish ship, years back. Behind that door, Flint and Billy conducted much more than the ship’s dirty business. Indeed, for weeks and months long since, the two had conducted a love affair.

“Are you well?” Flint asked him, his progress from behind his desk maddening slow, for Billy was always in a hurry to embrace him, greedy to kiss his salty mouth.

“Am now,” was Billy’s reply, and Flint’s hands traced his waist, smoothed upward onto his chest, until he caught the awkward lump beneath one palm. Billy smiled at Flint’s confounded frown.

“What is that?”

Billy slipped the knotted strings at his throat so the slit-front of his shirt opened; he fed in his hand and caught up his pet, pulled it free and balanced its back half on his opposite palm. It was still small enough to fit in his hand, and it sat there blinking and yawning. Flint chuckled and patted the side of Billy’s face, then scratched the cat’s chin with one fingertip.

“Missed this one when I drowned the others,” Billy explained. “Now we’re friends.”

Flint turned away and doused one of the lamps; there’d be no charts to consult, no writing to keep accounts. He poured rum into little gold cups and set them down where Billy could help himself. Billy moved the kitten to his shoulder and then took one up and downed it. Flint looked amused, affectionate, and Billy felt the muscles of his own jaw relax, the tension ease from his shoulders. Out on the deck he was a mountain; in Flint’s cabin, he could melt.

With the casual comfort of lovers together at home, Billy sank into Flint’s finely carved chair, with its satiny upholstered seat, and stretched his legs up so his crossed ankles rested on Flint’s handsome desk. Flint circled behind him, dropped a kiss on the top of his head, ducked close to his ear so Billy felt the moist heat of his breath as he whispered, “I’m glad you’ve found a friend.” He lifted the kitten off Billy’s shoulder and placed it on a nearby tufted stool. “But,” he added, “I need _my_ friend, at the moment.” He stroked his palms over Billy’s shoulders, smoothing and caressing. “My sweet,” he whispered, and trailed open-mouthed kisses down the side of Billy’s neck, then up. “Precious friend of mine.”

Soon enough they were bare to the waist, face to face in the just-big-enough bunk, passing sweet kisses back and forth on the tips of their tongues, their hands finding the way into trousers-fronts, and they licked their fingers to ease the way. Their bodies rocked against the sway of the bunk, counter to the roll of the ship, a lazy, urgent motion. Flint laid him down, took him over, let him be tender without fear of reprisal or humiliation. Flint mastered him with the press of his thighs, the slip of his hand, endless kisses on his lips and the crest of his cheek, breath in his ear whispering, “Darling you. . .my own. . .sweetest, sweetest thing I’ve known. . .” and Billy rushed to please him, all warmth and gratitude for Flint’s devotion, for his assurance that Billy Bones—hard as stone—was admirable in his kindness, lovable for his hidden, tender heart.

Flint gulped and grunted, grinding between Billy’s open thighs, their hands in each other’s way, guiding, gathering and stroking, and Flint looked at him as if he were beautiful. Billy closed his eyes, hovered there in the height of pleasure until his crisis came upon him in a sudden tidal wash of tingling heat beneath his skin, and he moaned quietly through it. Flint kissed him hard, reared up and bit his lips, hectic to find his own finish. After, they lay together until their breathing calmed, and Flint rearranged them, chest to chest with tangled ankles, then kissed Billy everyplace in his reach—brow, eyelid, earlobe, collarbone—gentle, worshipful. The kitten chirped as it circled the stool’s cushioned seat, and curled up once more. Billy hummed a sigh and snuggled closer to Flint, wishing he were as small as he felt, so that Flint could curl him up in one arm, hold him safe while he drowsed. He closed his eyes and let the sensation feel as near as it could to the one he truly sought. Before long he’d have to rise and dress, and go, but in the meantime, Billy relished sweet moments in the arms of this man with soft hair caught up in a ribbon behind his neck, who had taken him away, who saw him through and through—clear-eyed—and loved him.

  


“Wossat?”

“What’s what?”

“That, there. Inside your smock there, Bill.”

“It’s nothing. Never mind it.” Billy Bones turned his back, but there was another one in front of him, grinning in the stupid way bullies always had.

“Ol Billy Bones has got hisself a little pet, I fink. Yeh, he does, aw’right! Got a little kitty cat there all tucked up to his tit.”

“Mind yourselves,” Billy warned; he was bigger than them, and outranked them. He was not afraid of a fight.

“Ain’t that sweet?”

“Like a little girl! Puss-puss, puss-puss, c’mere little kitty. Is that what you says to it, Bill? Puss-puss-puss.”

“Shut your mouths, the both of you. Haven’t you anything better to do than make asses of yourselves over a useless thing about to be drowned?” Billy sneered, feeling sick. “There’s work to be done, you wasters.” With a scoffing expression, eyes fixed first on one smart-mouthed sailor, then the other, Billy yanked the kitten by its scruff from between the folds of his shirt, and hurled it sideways, over the rail, without breaking his furious gaze. “Get back to it,” he commanded.

Flint stood nearby, and tried to meet Billy’s eyes as he strode past, but Billy stared ahead, acknowledging no one, on his way back to the ropes. He resumed his work without a word, after a minute or two began humming a tune to himself as he went after it, focusing on the burning palms of his hands, the ache creeping into his forearms. Flint passed him by, slapped the back of his shoulder, but said nothing, asked nothing.

_“Land! Land ho!”_

At last, their return to Nassau. Billy Bones found a reason to smile in thoughts of how soon he would eat fresh meat, roasted and dripping hot juice on his tongue, instead of the same old scraps of tough-to-chew dried, salted pork. He would sleep in a real bed with clean linen and a downy pillow beneath his head. He’d have a bath, and then another one even hotter, and dress in clean clothes, and shave his face smooth. The best thing about a life at sea had always been that sweet first evening back on land.

Flint had rooms of his own, a little bungalow he kept in a quiet street on the edge of the city. As ever, Billy had fought with himself over which luxury to indulge in first, and savoured the knowledge of what lay at the end of all of it: a lovely, long night held in strong arms. Only after he’d gorged himself on good food and ale did he retreat to a steaming bath, used up four rags scrubbing every last bit of sweat and grime off himself, between his toes, under his fingernails, behind his ears. He scrubbed his teeth with salt and a fifth rag wrapped tight around the tips of two fingers. His skin felt slippery and taut afterward, pouring fresh water from a pitcher over himself to rinse the last of the grit into the silt at the bottom of the tub. He pulled on a long, lightweight nightshirt; he’d save the delight of fresh trousers and vest for the morning. His boots, always serviceable and sturdy, now offended him with their putrid smell and shabby scuffmarks; he set them outside the tall, windowed doors to the balcony, to breathe overnight.

Flint was already lying on the bed, dressed in clean trousers, with his hair in damp clumps; his beard was rose-gold in the light of the oil lamp by the bed, much lighter and glinting now that it was clean. His feet were bare. As Billy approached, he opened his eyes halfway, waking from a doze.

“How handsome you are,” Flint said, low and soft, and Billy’s face grew warm and he grinned. He found his satchel on the floor, almost beneath the bed’s foot, and went into it.

“Made you something,” he said, and passed Flint a small parcel wrapped in stiff linen and tied with twine.

Flint smiled and tugged free the knot, folded back the cloth. Inside was a comb Billy had carved from whalebone, with a motif of ivy vines across the shaft. The teeth were finer at one end, more widely spaced at the other, but he’d done that purposely.

“Ah, that’s a lovely thing,” Flint said, and shifted more upright against the pillows as he made a motion to employ it. “Shall I now?” he offered.

“Let me,” Billy replied, and took the comb from him, and sat close by him on the edge of the bed with one leg pulled up to tuck beneath him. With care, he began to smooth the tangles from Flint’s damp hair, and Flint closed his eyes like a contented cat being stroked, and even hummed pleasure at the sensation. Billy carried on combing long after it was needed; pleasing Flint was his own most pleasurable pastime. Ultimately, he set the comb aside and pressed a kiss to Flint’s cheek, just above the edge of his beard.

“Come here, my darling,” Flint murmured, and opened his arms. Billy found his place, hiking up the nightshirt to his thighs so he could easily swing one over Flint’s hips. He bent all the way forward in an attitude of worship—relief—and let himself be encircled in powerful arms, let his face sink into the pillow beside Flint’s head.

“I’ve told those two who bothered you about the cat that they should look for another crew to join. They’re no longer needed in my fleet.”

Billy spoke into the pillow. “You didn’t need to.”

“I’m sorry for you,” Flint whispered, and raised his head a bit to leave a comforting kiss on Billy’s shoulder, through the linen of his nightshirt. “ _Matthew_.”

His eyes and nose prickled, and his hard sigh echoed up from the pillow to dampen his cheeks. There was only one man in the world, now, who knew Matthew Ross. Flint had told him he’d another name, himself, but wouldn’t share all of it, only that his first name was James. Sometimes Matthew regretted having told him; who was Matthew Ross but a weakling of a boy, too quick to cry, too interested in the handiwork of women, and not well-enough practiced in the coarse poses of men? Men like he was meant to be, but had failed to become. Because he was awkward, and afraid, and cried too easily. He was no longer sure Matthew Ross was someone worth being. But then Flint would whisper his name, and hold him in a sturdy embrace, and take his pleasure from Matthew’s body—caressing, kissing, demanding, rough-handling—and those whispers were the sweetest he had ever heard, and made him remember who he was.

“My own Matthew,” Flint breathed, and guided his head up from the pillow, to look in his eyes. “I hate to see you hurt. It enrages me.” His eyes flashed fury; his tone was dark-edged. “Those men are lucky only to have been booted off my ship; I’d like to have run them through with my blade. For hurting you.”

Matthew thought to protest that he hadn’t been hurt. They were idiots moved by the tedium of work and the anxiety to get home, quick to poke fun at him, but who could blame them? And anyway, drowning spare cats was nothing. He never should have kept it. Flint’s obvious anger on his behalf kept him silent. He felt sickened with uncertainty that he was worthy of such passionate emotion. Rather than say anything at all, Matthew ducked to suck a hard kiss onto the side of Flint’s throat, slid downward to tongue his nipples, sucking one until it pebbled up hard beneath his tongue, then lapping at the other, blowing cool breath across it so Flint sucked his teeth and held Matthew’s head between his hands, and pushed him ever-father down.

Flint’s belly quivered as Matthew teased at its edges with his teeth, and then shimmied down Flint’s trousers. The thatch of hair at the base of his prick was white-gold and smelled faintly of perspiring desire when Matthew dug in his nose. He kept his mouth wet as he kissed Flint’s prick to life, slow and smooth up its length, stroking tongue and nibbling lips, and Flint hummed satisfaction, petting his head and the back of his neck.

“That’s right, precious,” he encouraged in a rough whisper. “You want to please me, don’t you?”

Matthew hummed assent—he wanted nothing so much as he wanted to please this strong, handsome man—and circled Flint’s crown with a soaking tongue, gathered him between tight lips, sucked and swallowed, then swallowed more. His eyes filled with tears and he struggled with his breath.

“Yes. That’s good. Yes.”

He relished the thin heat of Flint’s skin stretched across the firm proof of his desire, the feel of Flint’s heavy hand on the back of Matthew’s neck, guiding. His own hand he curled around to make up the difference, eager mouth pulling up hard and sinking down quick, ears intently listening for praise. His own cock throbbed and ran, and he savoured the ache of unfulfilled need.

“Ohh. . .” Flint moaned, and it was deep and gorgeous and Matthew echoed it, humming around the hot shaft rising and sinking between his lips, against his tongue. “You’re gorgeous. Will I let you finish me like this?” Flint panted, “Or will I have you fuck me?”

Matthew whimpered and lost his place, his mouth coming open around a gust of breath, and he rushed to resume his ministrations, licking up along the thick vein along the underside of Flint’s pale-pink prick, then around the crown, tonguing the edges of his foreskin to make him gasp.

“I’ll have it all,” Flint rumbled, and, held Matthew’s face in his hands, maneuvering him where he was wanted. Matthew held his breath, opened his throat. “I’ll come in your, _oh_ , pretty mouth. I’ll make you—come—in my hand.” His hips thrust up and up, and Matthew’s cheeks were streaked with reflexive tears; his throat was raw and his jaw ached. He was filled up with bliss, with gratitude, with a need to please as basic as his need to breathe. “Later, you’ll— _ah!—_ you’ll give me a good fucking. You’ll come inside me.”

A few roaring breaths, and Flint was coming, releasing Matthew’s head to grip the blankets in his fists, grunting a shout as the bitter heat of his cum flooded Matthew’s mouth, streaking his lips and chin. He licked it up, swallowed, felt perfectly used.

“Here, my boy,” Flint beckoned, reaching for him. “Come here. Take my place.”

They rearranged themselves, and Flint shoved the nightshirt up high, to expose Matthew up to his chest, and the way Flint looked at his body made him shiver. Lying close at his side, Flint wet his palm with his tongue and reached down to stroke. He lay his head down and whispered against Matthew’s neck, “My love. My sweet.”

Eyes closed, body feeling melted inward toward the heat gathering beneath Flint’s expert hand, the taste of Flint still in his mouth, Matthew licked his dry lips and dug his heels into the mattress.

“I adore you.”

Humming low, in time, Matthew touched Flint’s shoulder, his throat where his beard began; Flint caught his fingertips gently in his teeth, tickled them with the tip of his tongue, then let him go.

“My own Matthew,” he sighed. “Darling, precious you.”

That lovely long moment, heat and relief and pure pleasure perfected by the curve of his lover’s hand, and Matthew shuddered, and Flint kissed, and kissed, then kissed more. Matthew tensed, and tensed, and then melted, and was soft.

  



End file.
